missed realities (anthology)
by FreezeDryedGorgeous
Summary: This is a collection of drabbles and short fics written for various prompts or as gifts for people, and will include many different characters and ships. (lxlight, etc.)
1. grow old or something (l x light)

**grow old or something ; l/light ; T**

**warnings:** canonical character death.

**notes: **i've decided to upload a few of my old drabbles and things to ffn (as they've previously just been on tumblr/ao3) so anything under 2k will end up part of this series of unrelated drabbles and short fics. this one is lxlight but most of them will be less popular pairings (lots and lots of misa x everybody). this one was written in february of this year for dear light-kun's birthday. it's set in the afterlife (shhhhh about mu) and is very rambly and nonsensical.

* * *

The afterlife is a bit like normal life, in that it's completely dull.

"What do you do all day?" Light asks L, who is sprawled on his back on top of nothing, staring up at nothing, and doing nothing in particular.

"Oh," L says dully. "I don't know. Solve cases, eat sweets, parley with unreasonable government officials."

Light looks around. There are no case files and no computers and no sweets and definitely no government officials. There's not even Watari.

"No, that was before," Light says.

"Yes." L doesn't look at him. L looks just the same as he always has, except horizontal. "That was before."

_Before you killed me,_ is sort of implicit, and it seems neither of them feels overly inclined to make it otherwise.

* * *

Nothingness is aptly named; L is annoying; the days, if there are days, are long.

* * *

"I missed you, you know," Light tells him once, "after a while."

"Please don't."

"I did. I missed you." He isn't sure who he is trying convince here. He isn't sure why he is so close to L, why L's hair is tickling his sternum, only that is good to have a sternum and to know you have a sternum and for someone else to have hair and to feel it.

It's not black here, it's not white, it's not anything. Just him and L.

"I missed me, too," L says. It sounds dreary, almost melodramatic, the way he used to get sometimes, when they were alive and the world was made of things that you could touch and own and - eat. Light's not hungry, but god, he wishes he could eat.

"And now?" he asks.

"I think I've forgotten," L says. He shifts his head and his hair trails across Light's chest. His eyes are closed, they must be, but he feels L shift and enjoys it thoroughly.

"You haven't forgotten," Light says.

He opens his eyes and smiles at L, who is half in his lap by this time - and it would be weird, it might be weird if they were in the world and things were things that could be understood, but there is nothing here but L, nothing else to touch or know or grasp onto, and so they both take it as a sort of given that they can and should be as close to each other as possible. He smiles, though, can feel it in his mind even if he can't tell that his facial muscles have moved and then L is looking at him curiously.

"You are still charming," he says, with something like wonder and something like disgusted nostalgia.

Light snorts. "You're still not."

* * *

If nothingness had weather it would be a thin fog.

If L had weather it would be a tired Sunday rainstorm.

* * *

"We were never friends, were we?" Light says to him another time - if it is another time; it must be.

"What a strange thing to ask at a time like this."

Light's not sure what L means by _time like this,_ but assumes it could have something to do with the fact that L's mouth is on his hip, and then on his thigh, and then other places that shouldn't function properly if you're dead - and are they dead, are they really dead? It's fact, but fact feels like a dream from here and Light can't tell, doesn't know and doesn't care and -

And.

"No," L says, sitting up and wiping his mouth and grinning in a far-off way, "I don't think we ever were."

* * *

The afterlife is a lot like normal life, in that you get used to it after a while.


	2. the girls in the back (misa x takada)

**the girls in the back ; misa/takada ; T.**

**warnings:** canonical character death, vague sex, drinking, dysfunction.

**notes:** more little fic! written in february for my friend shauryn on tumblr, who was saddened by the lack of misaxtakada. they're my bb girls and i love them both quite dearly on their own and even more together. i know this ship and these characters aren't everyone's cup of tea, but please no hate? i mean, insult the fic all you want because writing quality? lol what is that. but leave my dollfaces alone. thank you for reading.

* * *

Light gets tired of meeting with Kiyomi after a time - tired of promises or bedsprings or simply just _tired_, the way he always looks - and starts to send his girlfriend instead. They perform for the taskforce just as well, though in a slightly different way.

"Listen, you hussy - "

"I'm shocked by your language, Amane-san."

"Leave Light alone! He's not interested, okay? He has _standards_. What is that hair-cut, anyway? You should really get a better stylist. I mean, you're on TV and everything. I guess it's just news, so the bar's not really that high, but…"

She goes on like that, her over-acting so unbearable that Kiyomi can hardly believe that whoever's listening in will buy it, but no sirens ring out, no police storm the door.

_Kira wants Mikami to call him. It's urgent,_ Amane writes on the notepad with one hand, twirling her hair with the other. Her handwriting is a looping mess, the Kanji barely legible through all the frills and twirls of the pen. Kiyomi can see the tops of her stockings from where she sits and there is a run in one of them.

It is empowering to feel so superior.

"It's highly immature of you to come here and attack me like this," she says, while writing back, _Understood_, penmanship neat and concise. _Anything else?_

Amane sticks out her tongue, scribbles something on the page, then makes a sufficiently audible noise of disparagement before storming out, boots clicking down the hallway.

_You really do have awful hair,_ the notepad reads. Kiyomi is not looking forward to continued correspondence with the Second Kira.

* * *

By their third meeting, it has become apparent that the reason that Misa Amane's over-the-top performances manage to fool trained police investigators is because Misa Amane's entire existence is, in fact, one over-the-top performance, and the investigators in question are familiar enough with that fact.

She talks too loudly and dresses too loudly and is far too much noise in and of herself, a little blonde package of constant whirring and squealing and wide eyes and confused little quirks of the lip. She overexcites herself and trips over her heels and tumbles her words out in a quick succession of ill-mannered, but not necessarily mean-spirited, nonsense, all designed to cut but not hitting further than skin-deep. She is a superficial thing made of superficial parts and her insults come off more like a joke that she herself is the butt of.

It's pathetic, in its way. But not pathetic enough to earn any of Kiyomi's sympathy.

* * *

The fourth time, Amane comes in drunk. Her clothes are rumpled and one of her pigtails has fallen out and she looks for all the world like the small, sad thing that she is. She is too intoxicated to write properly, shouts a line of unintelligible slurs in Kiyomi's general direction and then collapses against one of the side tables.

Kiyomi stares at her with a fascinated sort of disgust, can't quite believe that anyone would, even on pain of death, put themselves in such a humiliatingly vulnerable position. As if the world is a place full of side tables that it is perfectly acceptable to fall asleep on.

"Wake up, Amane-san," she says, but her voice is quieter than she means it to be and absent of its usual commanding effect.

In the end, she puts Misa to sleep in one of the beds with a bottle of water and writes her an insulting note on one of the unused pads of paper.

* * *

At some point - maybe the 7th time, possibly the 8th - after they've exchanged all the necessary information, Amane just sits in her chair and stares out the window, not looking at Kiyomi and not making any move to leave.

"Misa hates you," she says after a while, in typical third person, but it sounds more distant than it does cutesy, as if she's only relating a message from someone far-off and unfamiliar, rather than obnoxiously narrating her own life.

Kiyomi treats it like the latter, anyway. "Maybe Misa should grow up," she says, sipping her tea. He back feels suddenly ramrod straight in comparison to Amane's dejected slump.

Amane still doesn't look at her. "She can't."

It has more of an emphatic effect than it should and they both sit there for a long time, too long, until the tea gets cold and Light texts impatiently to demand what's taking so long.

* * *

Amane is drunk again, but not as much, and there is less agony to her this time than there is playful carelessness. The contrast to her usual state, though hard to detect at first, is striking when spotted. For such a wreck of a girl, she is always very carefully studied, words and movements and empty smiles all timed to make a certain impression, to communicate a certain degree of incapability that makes her both non-threatening and easy to ignore.

Currently, Amane is not easy to ignore. She spins around the room, laughing and shaking her hair about, saying terrible, pretty things about apples and names and the way Light looks on summer mornings, asleep and so beautiful - a mental image that shocks Kiyomi by not having the same weight or impact as that of Amane making a complete mess of herself in real time.

She trips into Kiyomi and smiles so horribly at her, as if it's all some joke and she's the only one who knows the punchline, and then kisses her on the edge of her mouth.

Her lips are sloppy, but awfully soft, gentle as if she can't quite bare to touch her but does anyway, choking her fingers into Kiyomi's hair and laughing sadly against her cheek. It's a quiet, staggering thing and Kiyomi can't quite force herself to put an end to it, but at the same time is unable to make herself consent to it, so she just stands still and lets Amane kiss her and tickle her neck with her small hands.

"I changed my mind," Amane says, after a minute or two of something dizzying and frightful and uncomfortably nice, "I do like your hair."

* * *

"He doesn't love you," Kiyomi tells her, another time, while they're half-sprawled on top of one another on one of the beds, kissing quietly and voraciously. She's says it not because she thinks Amane doesn't know it, but because she is only really beautiful when she is injured.

It doesn't have the effect she expects, though, and Amane just gets a vague, resigned look in her eyes and says, "He doesn't love anybody."

Kiyomi comes with Amane's hand up her skirt, staring at the cheap plaster of the hotel ceiling, wondering if God can forgive her for this and if she even cares if he doesn't.

* * *

"It's all been going wrong, you know," Amane says once, in the early dawn with the grey half-light splayed across the bedsheets. "It's all been going wrong for years."

Kiyomi twirls a finger through one of her pigtails and doesn't say anything.

* * *

It's the first time they've really spoken to each other outside of a hotel room and Kiyomi is naked and covered in a sheet and there is a dead body next to her and she is terrified. The phone shakes in her hand and she should call Light, she really should, but she dials Amane instead.

The phone rings too many times. She is naked in a church and there is a dead body _right there_ and when the line finally clicks live it feels more like salvation than anything ever has.

"Hello?" Amane says. "Helloooo?" She's chewing gum. There is a television on in the background.

Kiyomi's voice shakes when she speaks and she realizes that she's crying and she doesn't know where she is or what to say, but it's okay. It's all okay, in the end. Amane is quick and surprisingly competent and she doesn't even think to call Light or Mikami or do anything but drive straight out and find her.

Several people die that day - more than just the boy in the church - but Kiyomi is not one of them.


End file.
